This section of the support site provides information about the help desk alerts and notifications and is broken down into three sections - E-Mail, SMS and Instant Messaging.

E-Mail

The help desk uses e-mail extensively to keep you up to date with how your request is going. You will be emailed when the request is created, updated by our help agents or moved to another external software product.

You can keep commenting on a request by sending e-mail replies to existing notifications. You can do this manually by including the request id (prepended by the number/hash sign, e.g. #123) in the mail subject. This will append your e-mail to the relevant request.

Please make sure you keep your e-mail address up to date so that e-mail notifications can get through to you. We also recommend adding the iSAMS domain [isams.co.uk] to your safe senders whitelist so that e-mails do not get placed within your spam folder. So that your account is linked within your school organisation we request that you only use your school e-mail address.

You can change your e-mail address by logging into the help desk and navigating to your profile page. A link is located on the blue bar at the top of the page on the right.

SMS - Mobile Text Messaging

We have setup a comprehensive SMS messaging system to help deal with urgent requests. Before you submitted urgent requests please make sure you have read our About Urgent Requests policy.

If you submit an urgent request you will receive the following SMS messages:

1. A SMS message to say we have received your request
2. A SMS message whenever there is request update such as further information required or comments
3. A SMS message if the priority is downgraded because the request is not urgent
4. A SMS message when the request is solved

In order for you to receive SMS updates you must add your mobile phone number to your profile.

You can add or change your mobile number by logging into the help desk and navigating to your profile page. A link is located on the blue bar at the top of the page on the right. Once there click on the edit button and fill in your mobile phone number into the Phone number field. If you are based in the UK you just need to enter the number in a standard format - e.g 07777453653. If you are based outside of the UK you must enter your mobile phone number in the international format, e.g. 667777453653.

Instant Messaging - AIM, Yahoo!, Jabber, GTalk & MSN

Due to the flexibility of our help desk, we have created some additional functionality thats allows for updates to requests to be sent to Instant Messager networks. In effect, you can send updates to our support agents via AIM, Yahoo!, Jabber, GTalk and MSN.

This feature is currently being trialed by our support agents - if the feedback is good and the service is reliable and adds value we will open it up to help desk end users.

Last Updated: October 2009